


that chance of circumstance

by fleurmatisse



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Alternate Universe, Blood and Injury, M/M, Magical Dean Winchester, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, Witch Castiel (Supernatural), Work In Progress, but only in the beginning because, this is a meet-UGLY baby
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-09-16
Updated: 2019-09-18
Packaged: 2020-10-19 21:03:39
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 2
Words: 3,887
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20663750
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/fleurmatisse/pseuds/fleurmatisse
Summary: The hunter staking out Castiel's apartment gets stabbed in the heart. This is the beginning of a beautiful love story.





	1. castiel and dean have a totally normal first meeting

**Author's Note:**

> **content warning:** chapter one revolves around dean being stabbed in the heart and includes discussions of **blood, death, and the inner workings of the chest**. chapter two also involves discussions of blood.   
authorial warning: this is a work in progress with no update schedule. i'm posting it as i write it, and there's no outline. so basically if you for sure want an ending to what you're reading, i'd turn back now. otherwise welcome to whatever this turns into.

There’s a hunter outside of Castiel’s apartment building. If he wasn’t able to sense the gunpowder and sigils in the noisy black boat of a car, he thinks the clothes would be a dead giveaway; flannel layered over a t-shirt and under a jacket is practically the hunter uniform at this point. But Castiel hasn’t done anything wrong this time, so he ignores the blatant observation and carries on like usual, double-checking his wards as he leaves for work. 

He ignores the hunter the next day, too, and the day after that. When Castiel gets home the third day, he’s brought a coffee. He sends it over to the hunter’s side mirror, balancing precariously as the hunter jumps in his seat. Castiel smiles as he unlocks the front door and ignores the shouted  _ hey!  _ from behind him. 

On the fourth day, Castiel watches from the window as the hunter gets out of his car to walk up and down the sidewalk, eyes glued to the apartment building. There’s an aura around him Castiel hadn’t seen when he was in the car, a thin ripple of gold lining his form. Castiel frowns, watches the gold coalesce around the hunter’s hands, and resolves to talk to him after work today. He’s already running late. The hunter is back in his car by the time he reaches the sidewalk.

Castiel is almost home when he sees it: a bright flash of gold from the alley beside his apartment. It coincides with a yell and a thud, and Castiel can feel the magic spreading. The hunter’s car is empty. He runs. 

There are two men in the alley, one on the ground and one kneeling over the other. Castiel summons his blade to his hand and carefully steps into the alley. 

“—and a hunter, too,” the kneeling one says. The air around him pulls inward. Castiel stabs him while he’s busy gloating, dropping him backwards away from the hunter, who sucks in air like the other man had been keeping it from him. The hunter reaches for the knife in his chest. 

“Don’t!” Castiel exclaims, halting his hand. He crouches and takes the hunter’s hand in his own, letting his magic fall. The handle of the blade is short, and more golden light is pouring into it. 

“It’s taking the summer,” the hunter says, trying to fight his hand out of Castiel’s. Castiel has the advantage of not having a knife in his heart. “You—you’re the one he was after. Fuck, I’m gonna die in an alley helping a witch. Bobby’s gonna write  _ I told you so _ on my headstone.”

“You’re not going to die in an alley,” Castiel says, a bold claim he regrets even as he says it. He disappears his blade back to its place in his apartment and places his free hand over the hunter’s sternum. He closes his eyes and feels. “Besides, aren’t hunters burned in a righteous fire?”

“Doesn’t mean no headstones,” the hunter says. The knife is buried hilt to tip in his heart, a clean slice. His heart races around it, more magic flooding to the wound in an attempt to heal, and it pulls into the blade instead. “What—what are you doing, exactly, that feels like a hand in my chest?”

“Looking,” Castiel says, opening his eyes to meet the hunter’s. He can fix this if he has to. “No hospital, I assume?”

“No, god no,” the hunter says, laughing as he drops his head back on the concrete. “Imagine, a guy comes in with a glowing fucking knife stuck in his heart and oh look, inside he’s glowing some more! I’d be in Area 51 faster than you can shake a rat’s ass.”

Castiel pulls his magic back before it can get sucked into the blade. The hunter’s ribs rise and fall shakily under his hand. “I can’t help you here.”

“You just told me I wasn’t gonna die in an alley! Pretty fuckin’ rude to lie to the dying man!” the hunter exclaims, craning his neck so Castiel will look him in the eye again. 

Castiel resists the urge to roll his eyes. “I meant, I need to move you to my apartment.”

“Oh,” the hunter says. Castiel would say he almost looks abashed. “Oh, well, okay, you need to work on your clarity, man.”

“Says the man talking about shaking rat’s asses,” Castiel mutters under his breath. He removes his hand from the hunter’s chest. “It would be best if you didn’t move. Meaning,” he adds before the hunter can argue with the breath he drew in, “ _ I _ can move you, but you’ll have to keep yourself steady. Can you do that?”

“What kind of moving are we talking about here?” the hunter asks. 

“Levitation,” Castiel answers.

“I’ve always wanted to do that,” the hunter says. “Okay, steady, I can do steady.”

Castiel doesn’t notice he’s still holding the hunter’s hand until he tries to stand up and the grip keeps him in place. “It will feel like the ground is still beneath you,” he says, as soothing as he thinks his voice can be. “You just have to make sure you don’t tumble off.”

“Right,” the hunter says. He’s frowning, hard. “Just in case this goes sideways, my phone’s in my right jacket pocket. If you could call Bobby and Sam. They should know I’m—you know, if I don’t make it.”

“Okay,” Castiel says. 

“ _ Okay _ ?” the hunter repeats. “You’re not going to tell me not to worry, you save guys from bleeding out in alleys all the time?”

“You said it was rude to lie to you.” 

“I take it back,” the hunter says. “Lie to me all you want.”

“I am very well-versed in healing knife wounds to the heart,” Castiel tells him. 

“Fuck off,” the hunter says. He still hasn’t let go. “I’m Dean, by the way.”

“Castiel.” Castiel squeezes his hand, a facsimile of a handshake. “Are you going to let me up?”

“Right,” the hunter—Dean says. He releases his grip and looks determined to look determined.

Castiel almost smiles as he stands. He spells a quick shroud around them to divert any wandering eyes. “I’m going to lift you now.”

“Right,” Dean says again. He doesn’t jump when he starts to rise off the ground. Castiel puts most of his focus on keeping the air steady beneath him and the rest on making sure he doesn’t trip walking backwards out of the alley. “Levitation isn’t really as cool as I thought it would be.”

Castiel hums and maneuvers them inside the apartment building. He lives on the second floor, and Dean won’t fit in the elevator like this. He’ll curse himself for it later, but for now he lets his magic guide him through the appropriate doors until he can lower Dean, who hasn’t spoken since the alley, to the floor of his living room. Castiel puts a hand to his chest again. He can’t feel any magic. He looks at Dean’s face, pale and a little blue in his lips.

“Hurts,” Dean grits out before Castiel can ask if he’s still aware. 

Castiel summons a vial of chamomile. “It’s best if you aren’t awake for this,” he says, holding it up so Dean can see, his wide eyes tracking the movement. 

Dean nods. Castiel places a drop on his lips. A second after Dean licks it away, he’s unconscious. Castiel lets himself be relieved for half a second, and then squares his shoulders and gets to work. 

The knife has taken all of Dean’s magic, and Castiel suspects it would take his, too, if he tried to heal Dean’s heart as he extracted the knife. Which will leave Castiel precious little time to get a handle on the wound once the knife is out. He braces one hand on Dean’s sternum, feeling for his heart as he grips the handle of the knife. He shuts his eyes and yanks. The blade slips free with a noise Castiel barely hears. He drops it to the floor and places his free hand over the wound, blood gushing between his fingers. It’s a clean slice, a simple mending if Dean’s heart would stop pounding away. Castiel pushes, freezes it for a second, two, as he winds his magic through the muscle and holds it together. The first fiber stretches across the wound and the rest follow like ducklings in a row. Castiel lets Dean’s heart beat again, holding his magic and his hands in place until he’s sure it won’t tear. One beat, two, half a dozen, and the heal stays strong. He pulls his magic up through the wound until the blood stops flowing out to meet his hand. 

Dean slumbers on. 

Castiel sits back and breathes out slowly through his mouth. A deep breath in has him gagging on the smell of blood. He stumbles to his feet, magic fighting to clean his hands, but he’s tired, he’s too tired. He scrubs the blood away in the bathroom sink until all he can smell is soap and the telltale damp of mold. He can feel Dean’s heart pumping steadily through his magic and allows himself a moment to rest against the wall before he takes care of the body in the alley.


	2. Chapter 2

Dean wakes up and regrets it immediately. He groans against the pain in his chest and again when lifting his arm spreads the ache. He’s too old to be sleeping on a floor, too cold to be in just one layer, and really fucking sick of hunting. The room, crowded with old furniture and lots of—junk, if he’s being honest and  _ things _ if he’s being polite—thankfully doesn’t spin when he sits up. His heart doesn’t go bursting out from between his ribs, either, so he thinks he can call it a successful day so far. Woke up, didn’t die; things are looking up. 

His shirt is stiff with blood, despite the not-dying, and he’s glad he wasn’t awake for that. Monster’s blood? Fine, whatever. Being a human-shaped gusher himself? No thank you.

“The bathroom is down the hall,” a voice says, quiet and rough. Dean looks up to see the witch he’d been keeping an eye on. Cas—something, he’d said. Dean had kind of been panicking at the time, but he remembers the Cas part. Cas seems tired, not quite looking at Dean as he adds, “I left some clothes and a trash bag for yours.”

“Thanks,” Dean says. He’s got clothes in the car, but just the idea of going down the hall is exhausting, much less all the way outside. He gets to his feet, another point in his favor today, and can’t help pressing his hand over his chest. His heart thuds lazily against his palm. “And, thanks for helping with the whole—” He mimes getting stabbed and then pulling the knife out. Cas raises his eyebrows. Dean clears his throat, forces a smile to his face. “Thanks.”

“Of course,” Cas says. “I’ll most likely be in the kitchen when you come back.”

“Cool,” Dean says and escapes before he can make himself look like more of an idiot. On the sink, Cas has left a neat stack of clothes, topped by a sweatshirt that looks almost as old as Dean. He makes sure not to touch them while he peels his clothes off, grimacing when the front of his shirt scrapes his face. A quick check of his chest shows no sign of the knife. He frowns; his skin is marked with scars that his own magic healed, the ones he didn’t want to see anymore covered with tattoos. Should’ve made friends with a witch before he got hit with buckshot. 

He digs his phone out of his jacket before he throws it away and answers a text from Sam that came in while he was bleeding out. He’ll have to tell Sam about this some time, but it can wait until he’s not covered in his own blood.

The shower is cold when he turns it on, and Dean feels the absence of his magic like a kick in the teeth. Even after he lets the water heat up, it chills his skin, and he finds himself drying off as quickly as possible to get in the sweatshirt. It warms him immediately. He ties up the bag of his ruined clothes and takes it out of the bathroom with him, following his path back to the living room—which is surprisingly blood-free—and turns through the doorway where he finds a kitchen and Cas. He’d seen Cas from across the street plenty in the past few days, so he knew the basics: dark hair, tall as Dean and broad-shouldered. This close, Cas has a five o’clock shadow, pale skin, and enough magic that Dean can feel it even without his own.

Cas waves a hand without looking up from the book on the table, and the bag of clothes disappears. Dean curls his hand around empty air and then lowers it to his side.

“So,” he starts.

“From what I can tell, your magic is in the knife,” Cas says. A chair pushes out across from him, but Dean is pretty sure he did that with his foot. Dean sits, and Cas turns the book around for him, pointing to some runes Dean doesn’t recognize. The translation is in another language Dean doesn’t know. “There’s a spell to extract it, but it requires the caster to have magic.”

“So I can’t get my magic back without magic,” Dean says. Cas takes the book back and nods, and he still hasn’t looked at Dean. Dean crosses his arms over his chest, feels the phantom pain of the knife, and rests his elbows on the table instead. “Great.”

“I think the knife can be broken,” Cas says. “It should release your magic, but I can’t say for certain what would happen after that.”

“Great,” Dean repeats, muffled by his hands rubbing over his face. He catches Cas looking at him as he drops his hands, and Cas holds his gaze. His eyes are very blue. Dean’s skin prickles uncomfortably, and he frowns. “Are you—what did you call it, looking? Are you magic-looking at me again?”

The feeling disappears. Cas doesn’t look caught out. 

“I wanted to be sure you hadn’t undone the healing,” he says, standing with the book. Dean almost stands after him, but a plate of toast and eggs appears in front of him, along with a glass of orange juice. “You should eat. I’ll work on the knife.”

“Hold on,” Dean says, and Cas pauses in the doorway, half-turned away. “If we don’t know what’ll happen after you break the knife, I’d rather not risk obliterating my magic. Let me get a second opinion first.”

Cas nods. “I can keep looking through my books.”

Dean can’t help delaying him again when he turns fully away. “You do this for every random guy you find shanked in an alley?”

Cas stops a step farther into the living room. “You said he was after me.”

It’s not a question.

“He was,” Dean says anyway.

“Then this is the least I can do,” Cas says. Dean lets him go.

The eggs are hot, and Dean only hesitates a second before he eats them. If Cas wanted him dead, he wouldn’t have gone to the trouble of saving his life. Besides, he’s still cold and the food helps warm him up.

They break the knife. Bobby can’t find anything about it at all, and Cas’ books don’t include any recovery information. Dean takes the hammer Cas summons out of nowhere and smashes the hilt on the pavement after dark behind the building while Cas keeps the noise from ricocheting into the apartments. It takes three solid whacks, and then the handle cracks and Dean has the disorienting pleasure of watching his own magic curl out into the cool air. He already knew it was yellow, but usually when he saw this much of it at a time, it was bleeding out of him. 

It gathers into a small ball of light above the broken knife. Dean reaches a hand out, and it shoots into his palm, coating his skin but not going in.

“Here,” Cas says, holding out a very pointy t-shaped blade. 

Dean pricks his finger on the end, and his magic rushes in. It burns its way up his arm before settling behind his ribs where it belongs. He can’t help a sigh of relief as it warms his skin from the night’s chill. Cas’ magic thrums beside him. 

“You have all of it?” Cas asks.

“Yep,” Dean says, a grin spreading across his face. His finger is already healed, he can feel his toes again, and the night is young. He picks up the broken knife and gets to his feet. “I think this calls for a celebration.”

Cas looks skeptical. Dean soldiers on, handing Cas the hammer; it disappears a second later. 

“Yeah, there’s gotta be a good bar around here,” Dean says. “Come on, I’ll buy you a beer. Least I can do.”

Cas smiles, shaking his head after a second. “I have to work.”

That knocks the wind right out of Dean’s sails. “Oh,” he says. “Right, alright, solo celebration it is.”

“I’m off at six,” Cas says. Dean raises his eyebrows, and Cas’ smile quirks higher on the right. “If you’d like to pay me back with breakfast.”

Dean’s grin returns. “I can do breakfast.”

“I was thinking about you at work,” Cas says when he sits across the table from Dean. Dean lifts an eyebrow, smiling, and Cas rolls his eyes. “I remembered a story someone told me about a pair of immortal hunters that got rifles named after them.”

Dean laughs. “I’ve heard that story,” he says. “Too bad I was born after Winchesters got popular.”

“But not very long after,” Cas guesses.

“Don’t you know it’s rude to ask a hunter his age?” Dean says, and ruins it immediately by adding, “Two years. What about you?”

“About two centuries earlier,” Cas says, and smiles when Dean whistles low.

“You should be getting senior citizen discounts, man.”

“I think we’re both well over that limit,” Cas says. 

“What are you talking about?” Dean says, scoffing as he picks up his coffee. “I’m barely forty.”

Cas laughs. It’s quiet, barely more than a stuttering breath, and Dean already wants to hear more of it. 

“Are you fucking kidding me right now?” Dean is saying a minute later. “Three hundred years and you’ve never eaten a waffle?”

“Food is a recent development for me,” Cas replies, busy perusing the menu. “I’ve never had a  _ hashbrown _ , either.”

“ _ Dude _ ,” Dean says, and Cas looks up. “God as my witness, you are going to eat a fucking hashbrown today.  _ And  _ a waffle. And whatever else you’ve never had.”

“I think that might be excessive,” Cas says, smiling.

“I stopped caring about excessive in 1953,” Dean says, right as the waitress returns to their table. She looks amused at the idea. Dean gives her his best smile and says, “You might wanna warn the kitchen about this order.”

  
  


It’s novel, Dean thinks, to talk to someone else with an impossible age, someone that’s not Bobby or Sam. Cas seems to think the same thing, even if Dean’s prodding about his favorite decades turns up a lot of  _ I didn’t see much of that one _ . 

“Did you  _ ever _ see much of a decade?” Dean asks.

“I’ve seen most of this one,” Cas says. “I like it so far. Phones have become slightly more reliable than carrier pigeons.”

Dean chokes on his third coffee. The waitstaff has started sending not-so-subtle signals that they need to leave. 

Cas asks him about his magic. “Summer?” he says, and Dean knows he’s being quoted at himself. 

“Yeah, it’s sort of seasonal,” Dean says with a shrug. A hundred forty years and he’s still not sure exactly how it works, just that it has and it does. That’s all he really needs to know, he thinks. “I can do more in summer, less in winter, but it’s always there. Something to do with sunlight, like I’m some kind of algae.”

Cas smiles. “Slightly more complex than algae.”

“Slightly,” Dean laughs. He catches the waitress glaring daggers at them and clears his throat. “I think we’ve officially outstayed our welcome.”

Cas glances at the waitress and turns back to Dean quickly, rueful. “I suppose we have.”

Dean takes out his wallet, thumbing through the bills until he’s got enough to cover all the food they ordered and a suitable tip to make up for the—Dean does a double-take at his watch—three hours they’ve been taking up a table. “Jesus, why’d you let me keep you out so long? You must be exhausted.”

“You weren’t keeping me,” Cas says, following Dean out of the diner. He’s smiling again, softening the planes of his face. “I could have done without the runny eggs, but otherwise I had a lovely time.”

Dean laughs. “No runny eggs next time, got it,” he says. He catches what he said and almost corrects his presumption.

“They don’t serve eggs for lunch, do they?” Cas asks.

“Depends on the place,” Dean says. His phone buzzes in his pocket and keeps buzzing as he pulls it out. Sam. It goes to voicemail before he can answer, and he sees a text from Bobby.  _ You didn’t tell me not to tell him _ . He curses as Sam calls again. He makes an apologetic face at Cas when he answers. “Hey, Sammy, hang on a second.”

“ _ Dean! _ ” Sam exclaims.

Dean mutes the call and holds his phone to his chest for good measure. “I gotta get yelled at by my brother for a while.”

Cas reaches in his coat pocket and hands Dean a piece of paper. “Here’s my number for when you’re no longer in trouble.”

“You make it sound like I’m about to be grounded,” Dean says. Cas shrugs. Dean shrugs back, defeated. “I might have to make an in-person appearance to prove I’m not dead. Then Sam might kill me anyway.”

Cas laughs again, louder than before. “I’ll pray for you,” he says.

Dean can’t help bridging the distance between them to bump his knuckles against Cas’ forearm, smiling. “I’ll call you.”

“I’ll answer,” Cas says. He angles himself down the sidewalk toward his apartment. They’re only a few blocks away. “Goodbye, Dean.”

“See ya later, Cas,” Dean says. He watches him walk away for a few seconds, and then Sam, who had been quiet and most likely fuming, yells his name again. Dean unmutes the call. “What’s up, Sam?”

“ _ Don’t  _ what’s up _ me, Dean, _ ” Sam says. Dean almost laughs.

“Yeah, alright, sorry,” Dean says, and lets Sam yell at him for keeping his near death from him. Cas has disappeared from sight, but Dean’s thoughts drift to him anyway. It doesn’t help the lecture from Sam and honestly Dean has a couple decades of crap he could throw back, but he doesn’t feel like fighting today. He smiles to himself and starts walking back to his car. He’ll have to find somewhere good for lunch whenever he gets back to Atlanta.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> For reference, Winchester Rifles got popular with the 1877 model, making Dean about 140


End file.
